


Draw Me Like One of My Bots

by unclechrom (ylisseanprince)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, I'm incapable of writing anything too serious, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 16:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19299658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ylisseanprince/pseuds/unclechrom
Summary: In the months following the Chitauri invasion and the Avengers' subsequent takeover of Stark Tower, Steve seems to be spending more and more time in Tony's workshop. The only problem Tony has with it is that he wishes Steve would pay less attention to his bots and maybe a little more attention to him.Tony has a fantastic plan to become Steve's new drawing model.





	Draw Me Like One of My Bots

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I’m like “this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever written,” I somehow manage to one-up myself the next time.

The idea came to Tony one day while Steve was quietly sketching in his workshop as he tinkered with some improvements to Barton’s grappling arrows. He was beyond tired of having to catch that dumbass out of midair because of his taste for freefalling to his death, and like hell he’d have Fury on his ass for any Hawkeye pancakes.

It seemed that in the months following the Chitauri invasion and the Avengers moving into Stark Tower, Steve had been spending more and more time in the workshop lately. Tony hadn’t quite figured out the reason behind it yet, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain about having company. But drawing the bots and all of the other mechanical equipment had to get old after a while. Wouldn’t a more… organic subject be more Steve’s cup of tea? Like some trees or some shit. They totally had trees in the 40’s.

He chanced a look in Steve’s direction, and he had that damn pencil between his damn pouty lips again as he furrowed his brow and erased whatever line had offended him so deeply. How dare it not be as perfect as the man drawing it.

And then Tony was offering before he even actually considered what he was saying.

“I could model for you sometime, ya know.”

Steve’s attention immediately shifted to Tony, and he felt heat start to crawl up the back of his neck when those beautiful blue eyes considered him. This crush was getting way out of hand.

“Dum-E’s a pretty good model.” Steve reached out and patted the bot that had been posing for him for the past few hours of the early afternoon. “He holds a pose very well, dontcha, boy?”

“Bet I could do one better,” Tony challenged, work all but forgotten at this point.

Steve gave him an amused look. “Are you jealous of your own bot?”

_Yes._

“No.” He pondered for a moment. “Besides, he’s slacking on the job. Dum-E, look at that mess over there. I thought I programmed you to help me around here, not try to launch a new career as a model.”

The bot gave a sad beep as it rolled away from Steve to get back to work.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a slave driver, I get it. No fun allowed.” Tony feigned annoyance at his bot while Steve burst into laughter at the whole scene. “I get no respect here, from my bots or from you.”

“Well,” Steve got his laughter under control, and his brilliant grin was replaced by a teasing smile, though his face was tinged with red from laughing. “You gonna show me what you’ve got in mind?”

“Right now?” Steve nodded, maintaining eye contact, and boy, that was _not_ fair. Tony could feel his mind grinding to a halt. Was he _flirting_? There was no way. “Yeah, okay, sure. Give me a sec, Cap.”

He saved his work and flicked the monitors closed before awkwardly walking over to the side of the workshop where Steve was sitting with his sketchpad.

Well, here goes.

Tony tried to channel the confidence and nonchalance he had whenever he was charming a room of socialites, but somehow it was so much harder with just Steve. Throwing caution to the wind, he pulled his t-shirt off over his head and tossed it over the side of the couch.

That seemed to have caught Steve off guard a bit, his eyes went a little wide and the red on his cheeks reached his ears now. “You don’t have to take your clothes off for this.”

“Why not? Isn’t that how all the masters do it? I’m no Greek god, or Norse god for that matter.” He paused, suddenly feeling more self conscious. “Actually, let’s not bring up Thor’s muscles right now.”

He shucked off his jeans and then just stood there, unsure of what to do now that he was all but presenting himself to Steve. Jesus Christ, this was a bad idea. At least he had left his boxers on; it was a bit too chilly in the workshop to be quite that brave.

For a moment, he was almost self-conscious about the scars on his chest surrounding the arc reactor, and the damn reactor itself, but he knew there was no way in hell that Steve of all people would judge him for it. Too much all-American goodness and that stuff. And it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before, modesty was a thing of the past after SHIELD’s decontamination chamber.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Steve mused, looking strangely fond at Tony considering his current state of… lack of clothing.

“Posed mostly nude for someone? Surprisingly, no, the opportunity has not presented itself before.” He shifted his weight back and forth, waiting for Steve to maybe tell him what to do with himself.

“Don’t do anything too demanding for the pose the first time. You’ll probably regret it.” Steve commented as he got settled with his sketchpad and waited for Tony to do something.

Of course that came across as a challenge to Tony, and he immediately decided he was going to blow his mind with this pose. Actually, no. No blowing. That would be a very unfortunate train of thought in his current state of undress.

Knowing his best asset aside from his face was well… his ass, Tony turned his back to Steve and planted his feet rather far apart, then he twisted his back as far as he could to try to maybe get a bit of his chest showing, too. His balance was a little wobbly, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the name of art. He anchored his hands on his hips for lack of anything else to do with his arms (and perhaps the support was actually needed a bit). Yeah. Composition, that was an art thing, right? Dynamic angles and all that jazz.

He could have sworn he heard Steve snort at him, but when Tony tried to make eye contact with him, Steve was already sketching away. The playful retort he had ready to fire at the other man died on his lips, and he diverted his attention to maintaining the, frankly, ridiculous pose he had put himself in.

There was already a burning strain settling into Tony’s calves the longer he stood like that. Maybe sticking his feet that far apart hadn’t been the best idea, but he couldn’t back down now. He could totally do this. Then a weird twitch started in his torso that he tried his damnedest to ignore, but it became way too much in a matter of maybe thirty seconds.

“Yeah, no. That was an absolutely terrible idea.” Tony confessed as he all but fell over when he let go of the pose.

At that, Steve burst into laughter again, throwing his head against the back of the couch. “I was wondering how long you’d last like that,” he finally got out between laughs.

Suddenly drained of his energy, Tony dramatically flopped onto the couch and poked at Steve’s leg with his foot. “Were you just going to let me suffer in silence?”

“If you were truly suffering, you wouldn’t have been quiet about it,” Steve shot back with a grin.

“So Captain America is a smartass now? And sadistic, too.” Tony went on. “The American public will be heartbroken if they find out.”

“I’ve always been a smartass if you ask...” Steve trailed off and there was a distant look to his eyes, as if he was in another time. Well, that wouldn’t be inaccurate, would it? There was a heaviness to his smile, and things grew quiet between them for a moment.

Tony couldn’t stand the silence any longer, so he poked at Steve again. “Hey, you gonna let me see what you’ve got there?”

When Steve answered, the light had returned to his eyes and his smile was amused again. “Maybe sometime.”

That was fair enough.

Eager to not let his plan completely fail, Tony switched gears on his tactics. Oh yes, this one was fool-proof.

He gracefully stretched his lithe body further across the couch and draped his arm over the side of the couch. “Rogers, paint me like one of your French girls.” He hesitated. “You’ve seen that one, right?”

Steve stood up, and immediately Tony was worried he had overstepped some sort of boundary, but then he pulled up another chair facing the couch and sat down with his sketchpad.

“I _have_ seen that one.” He seemed to ponder something. “Most of it, at least. I might’ve fallen asleep before the ending, but it’s not like l didn’t already know how it’d end.”

“You fell asleep?” Tony asked, teasingly. “And somehow everyone claims _I’m_ the old man around here.”

Unable to just lay there and be a quiet model for Steve, Tony was compelled to keep the conversation going to fill the silence.

“How long did I last?”

“Like… three minutes, maybe.” Steve tapped his pencil against his bottom lip, and Tony couldn’t take his eyes away. “And that’s a generous estimate.”

“What? There’s no way. That had to be at least like, five minutes, pushing seven probably.” There was a pause as something dawned on him. “You were timing me.”

“Might’ve been.” Steve’s lips quirked as if he was holding back more laughter.

“You’ve got the whole country fooled with this wholesome image of yours. But I know the truth.” Tony punctuated his sentence with a half-hearted point in Steve’s direction. “You, are a little shit, Steve Rogers.” 

Sketchpad forgotten for the moment, Steve was outright beaming at him now, and Tony was finding it hard to even be jokingly irritated with that face.

They slipped into casual, quiet conversation after that, and the couch was beginning to real absolutely way too comfortable. The exhaustion of the day was hitting him, but Tony willed his eyes to stay open and was doing an excellent job of it.

…

And then he found himself blinking awake. Shit. He’d completely fallen asleep.

Tony looked over to where Steve had been sitting while he drew, and the other man was nowhere to be seen, his sketchpad laying abandoned on the chair instead. It belatedly occurred to Tony that he wasn’t chilling anymore because a rather warm blanket had been tucked around him.

Except the main source of that warmth wasn’t the blanket, but perhaps the body heat radiating off of the super soldier who had somehow squeezed himself onto the couch behind Tony and had an arm draped sleepily around Tony’s waist.

_Oh._

This was a rather pleasant development, and certainly more than Tony had hoped for at this point.

Before he could bask in whatever it was that had developed, curiosity overtook all other thoughts going through Tony’s mind, and he carefully reached for the sketchpad, trying to not wake Steve in the process. He quietly and delicately flipped through the pages, the first few were sketches of Dum-E and the other bots, and different pieces of equipment around the workshop… then it was just… pages and pages of Tony working, hair mused and face streaked with grease. Tony pouring over blueprints. Tony laughing. He wasn’t aware he could still smile like that after he and Pepper had broken up. 

And then there was a quick gesture drawing of the stupid pose Tony had attempted earlier. There wasn’t much detail to it; Steve had clearly had other things on his mind aside from capturing it on paper. There was even a damn time written down next to it. 2:47. Damn it, he really was being generous with the three minutes.

On the last used page is a finished drawing; it was Tony, sound asleep on the couch, looking more peaceful than he had felt in years. The fondness was clear in the soft lines on the paper, and Tony’s heart felt like it was catching in his throat.

He froze as he felt Steve stirring behind him, but Steve just pulled Tony closer to his body before he proceeded to bury his face between Tony’s shoulder blades. Huh. Captain America is a cuddler. Tony filed that tidbit of information away for future use.

“‘Morning, Sleeping Beauty.” Well, he might as well just jump right in. “Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to look at these, but I did, so.”

“If I didn’t want you to look, I wouldn’t have left it within reaching distance.” Oh, the grogginess in Steve’s voice was really doing something to him.

“Is that so...” Tony continued on. “You come down here for more than the bots?”

Steve huffed a laugh against the back of Tony’s neck. “I’m not… great at these things, so I thought I’d let my drawings speak for me.”

“Well, I stripped down to my boxers to express my feelings, so I’d say we’re in the same boat here at least.” Tony let out a chuckle at how ridiculous both of them were.

He could feel Steve move to get up, and he tried not to whine at the loss of contact and warmth once the other man was upright.

“Coffee,” Steve grumbled, voice still tinged with sleep as he wiggled past Tony to get off the couch.

Once he was up, Tony noticed that Steve had apparently at some point taken off his pants and was only in his boxers and that sinfully tight t-shirt. Holy _hell_ how had Tony not noticed that when their bodies were flush together.

Tony continued to look through Steve’s sketchpad while he was making coffee, and now that he didn’t feel as if he was sneaking around, he could take the time to fully appreciate the details. Somehow, Steve had managed to capture the soft glow of the arc reactor in his chest, and Tony’s heart swelled with fondness.

Soon after, Steve returned with two cups of coffee. Forget super soldier, this man was some kind of super angel.

“Thanks,” Steve mumbled as he sat back down on the couch next to Tony.

Oh. He must’ve said that out loud.

“Have you slept yet today?” The super angel asked with a bemused look.

“Yup, like five minutes ago,” Tony answered after downing nearly half the cup of coffee.

That look was now a weird mix of sternness and puppy dog eyes that made Tony almost feel guilty.

“Tony.”

“Don’t ‘Tony’ me with that look on your face. I can’t be held responsible for any promises I might make under pressure.”

“It’s almost four in the afternoon,” Steve tried to reason with him. “You should give sleeping like a normal human a chance for once tonight.”

“Hm, you know what? I will, under one condition.” Tony locked eyes with Steve’s. “Join me?”

The answer he received was the warmest smile he thought he’d ever seen directed at himself before Steve pulled him close and brought their lips together in a tender kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> As a former art major, I just wanna say that nude modeling isn’t really all that sexy and one time our model fell asleep on top of a tall metal ladder and I spent the entire class worried she was going to fall off.
> 
> I wrote this because I needed to take a little break from my P5 fic, which is ironic because I haven’t updated it since last year, but I _have_ been working on it. Promise.
> 
> If you think I’m funny, I also like to shitpost on twitter.


End file.
